One Card
by Kat Lee formerly Pirate Turner
Summary: Years in the future, one unexpected card changes everything. Het. Mild Slash. Future Fic.


Title: "One Card"  
Author: Pirate Turner  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Years in the future, one unexpected card changes everything.  
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, names, codenames, places, items, fandoms, titles, and etc. are always © & TM their respective owners, not the author, and are used without permission. Any and all original characters and everything else is © & TM the author and may not be reproduced in any way without the author's express, written permission. The author makes absolutely no profit off of this work of fan fiction, and no copyright infringement is intended.  
Author's Note: 244. That's the number of stories that were sitting on my hard drive collecting dust because I lack the energy and time to take care of them as I once did. My betaing pattern has always been to write, then type up if written on paper, the story, read it aloud to my beloved Jack and our children, editing as I go, and then finally format and post. Sadly, this part is simply taking too much of my time and energy, and my beloved Jack and I have too little time together in person these days to be able to keep up with my stories. So what to do? Give up writing? I actually considered it for a while, tried to make excuses to myself other than the large number of stories collecting cyber dust on my computer, as to why I lacked the energy and Muse to write new tales. And then, with the turn of the new year, I decided to stop running and face the problem. The problem is, quite frankly, that once one gets so bogged down in formatting and editing that writing is no longer a pleasure but the actual posting of those writings becomes a hassle and - egad! - work, it's time to cut something out, and that will never be the writing process. So, in short, yes, there will be mistakes in this tale. Yes, it's missing about half of the header information I usually include. But I wrote it for pleasure and am posting it in hopes of sharing that pleasure with others. Do with it as you will.

He stood at his mailbox, clutching the single card that had come and staring at it in disbelief. He couldn't believe, or perhaps he didn't want to, that he had received information about the drug in question after all this time. It wasn't as though he'd ever needed the medication, although it had been a close call and he had nearly lost his own mind when he'd been a teenager. He blinked and looked again at the card, wondering, and even hoping, that the heat was causing his mind to play tricks on him, but there it was, still in the same boldface printing declaring the mental instabilities made worse by taken the drug whose name he'd thought he'd never read or hear again.

At least, he hoped he wouldn't hear of it again, but reading its name now, and the side effects that skilled physicians had finally determined were indeed caused by it, brought a whole slew of questions racing through Pacey's mind. He flipped the card over, expecting to see a name he recognized in the Sender's address field, but it was just a generic card. Why, he wondered, would they be trying to include him in their lawsuit against the drug manufacturer? He'd never taken the drug. He'd only dated a girl who had taken it and then ripped his heart.

It had to be a trick, Pacey thought frantically, flipping the card over several times and examining each spot on the small, white piece of paper with black ink as though it could tell him the true reason why he had received it. He didn't need it, not now, not after all these years. He didn't need to know that it caused its taker to have even less sanity and a whole mess load of other disorders, including nymphomania. He didn't need to be reminded of why his life was the way it was, why his world had world had been torn asunder. He didn't need to think about her.

Not that he didn't still think about her every moment of his life, every second of every day and night. Regardless of rather Pacey was awake or dreaming, she was still there, haunting his every thought with wonders of what might have been had he only accepted her sleeping with another man. But that wasn't right, he told himself yet again. She'd had no right to even ask for forgiveness after what she had done.

He had been true to her. He had fought his feelings for Joey and his raging hormones in her absence. Even if he had later come to realize that Joey was nothing more than a good friend to him, and that she and Dawson belonged together, he hadn't thought so at the time, and it had taken every ounce of his self control not to do more than hug her and hold her hand during that time when she'd needed him so badly.

He'd needed her, too, as badly as she'd needed him. He'd needed her to keep him sane in Andie's absence, but after Joey had eventually gone back to Dawson, Pacey had found himself alone again with too much time to think. He always had too much time to think, even today, on his thirtieth birthday when there wasn't a single damn person who still cared enough about him to throw him a birthday party, wish him a happy birthday, or even send a stupid greeting card in the mail.

Instead, he'd received this mail. Not even junk mail or bills had come, and he knew he got plenty of both. Why couldn't this blasted thing in his hand be a bill instead? He wanted to shout, but instead he forced himself to remain silent lest his neighbors look at him and think him even more loose in the head than they already did. His hands shook as he thrust the card back into his hot, metal mailbox and slammed the door. He drove his hands into his pockets as he turned around, shoulders slumped, and headed back into his little house on his little, quiet, and boring street.

He made it about half way back across the road before stopping and looking back over his shoulder at the mailbox. His teeth showed as he muttered underneath his breath. His words were not even coherent to him, but his heart was twisting with such turmoil and anguish that he had to let something out. He raced back across the road, yanked his mailbox open, grabbed the card, and rushed back into his house.

He made a beeline straight to the phone, hit speed dial to get through faster, and then demanded as soon as the other party picked up, "Is this some kind of sick joke?!"

"The joke," the voice on the other end replied in a mocking tone, "is that you're turning thirty today, little bro, and you still don't have a clue what life's all about."

"Yeah, and you're the one to tell me!" Pacey rolled his eyes and gritted his teeth before he could lose what little patience he still had left and really rip into Doug. "Just tell me. Why in the Hell did you send me this card?"

"What card?"

"Don't play dumb with me! Either you or Jack sent it! Now fess up and tell me why in the Hell you sent it!"

"Whoa! Come on now, Pace; calm down."

"Don't tell me to calm down when you've - " He was now holding the phone so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

"I haven't done anything," Doug replied, speaking in his calm, authoritative voice of a police officer trying to calm down a lunatic. "I swear."

"Then let me talk to Jack."

"Not until you calm down."

"Let me - "

"Hey, I've got an idea. Why don't you come on over with that card and show me what's got you so upset? We'll figure it out together."

"Just let me speak to Jack, damn it! I don't care if he's naked and you two have been boinging it! I just wanna talk to him and find out why he sent you this card!"

"Hey, Pacey."

Pacey breathed a heavy sigh of relief as Jack came on the phone, but he was still furious. "Jack, why did you send me this card? Your sister and I are through! We've been - "

"Whoa, whoa! What card?"

"What? You mean . . . You didn't send it, either?"

"No. I don't even know what you're talking about."

"Then who the Hell sent it?!"

"Pacey," Jack replied calmly in a tone very similar to his boyfriend's words from earlier, "if I don't know what card you're speaking about, what makes you think I know who sent it? But, look, Doug's right. You should come over, and then we'll figure it out together, okay?"

"This just doesn't make any sense," Pacey muttered, almost feeling defeated. If Jack and Doug hadn't sent the card as a way of patching him back up with Andie, who had sent it, and why? The mailer claimed to come from the organization formed to stop the drug and bring reimbursement to the people whose lives it had messed up, but he wasn't one of those people. He shouldn't be receiving it, and there was no way they could have gotten his name as he had never taken the blasted medication before!

"Pace? You want us to come over?"

"No." Pacey shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment against the migraine that was beginning to pound behind them. "No. I'll be over in a minute." Maybe driving would clear his head, he thought, as he hung up the phone. He needed something to calm him down, and driving often did the trick. It wasn't as much fun as sailing, but he'd given up his boat long ago. He no longer believed in True Love, and so he had no desire to sail a ship by its name or see the world that was made so less prettier by the ruby glasses of love being knocked off of his face.

It wasn't just sailing he'd given up, he reflected as he pulled out of his driveway. He had given up so much. There was nothing that still interested in him. There hadn't been for years. He'd tried to keep going after his breakup with Andie. He'd dated almost every girl in Capeside, but it was all to no avail. No one reached him like she had.

But, then again, he thought glumly, no one had ever hurt him like she had either. That was because he'd never loved any one else, and Pacey wouldn't for as long as he lived. He'd given his heart to one girl, one girl in a million who he'd truly loved and trusted not to hurt him, and she'd betrayed him at the first opportunity she'd gotten. He couldn't even remember the name of the bastard who she had bedded while she'd been gone to the asylum, but he remembered the pain it had caused him. It was still as fresh and heart-wrenching as it had been all those years ago on that fateful day when she'd first told him what she had done and, with that admission, the silent truths of how little he meant to her and that she could never feel for him the way he felt for her.

Pacey almost missed the turn as he drove up onto Jack's and Doug's driveway. He almost missed it, because there was a whimsy figure standing before their front door whose mere presence alone instantly demanded his entire attention. He knocked over their trash can as he came to a screeching halt and made the tires squeal as he slapped on the brakes. She wasn't surprised at his reaction at seeing her, nor spooked by his almost hitting their brothers' house, but she had been crying.

Pacey didn't know how long he sat there in his car, just staring over the feet, machinery, and grass that still separated them into the eyes whose beauty he'd never forgotten. Her eyes, her face, her whole being had always been breath-takingly beautiful, but Andie McPhee was never more beautiful, nor did she ever stir his heart more, than when she cried. Every ounce of his being raged to take away all her pain and make her tears stop. He'd always wanted to protect her from the world, and seeing her crying before him now, rocking slowly from side to side, and her hands tucked demurely behind her, Pacey realized that he still wanted to protect her.

He didn't just love her. He still wanted to protect her, and he still _wanted_ to love her. That's why he'd never been able to stop. No one else had ever meant to him what she meant, and even if she didn't love him, he couldn't stop feeling the emotions that welled within his heart and soul for her.

She started coming slowly toward him, and he knew he should run. He knew he should back out of that driveway and fly down the road like all of Hell was nipping at his heels and hungry for his soul. But he couldn't. She drew him, as she always had, like a moth to a flame. He opened his door, summoned all his courage to him - the courage that no one else thought he still had left as all he did with his days was work and then drink away all his nights -, and stepped out.

She was so afraid. He recognized the fear in her eyes, though her body didn't tremble. He'd seen it there before. He'd stopped those fears back then and helped her to heal the heartache the loss of her brother's life and her mother's and her own sanity had caused. He'd helped her to heal, and she'd torn him asunder as repayment. "McPhee." Good, he thought. His voice sounded strong. She couldn't hurt him any more than she already had, and he intended to let her know that while never admitting to just how badly he was hurting inside.

She raised her eyes to meet his, blinked back her tears only to have more fall into her blue eyes, and brought his world once more to a screeching halt as she admitted boldly, "I sent it."

Ice sliced through his veins followed quickly by fire. He screamed inside. Yet he persisted in maintaining a calm appearance on the outside. "What?" There was a hitch to his voice, a harshness that gave them both pause.

"I sent the card," Andie blurted out, and then as she always had, once she started talking, she seemed unable to talk. "I sent it, Pacey, to try to explain to you what happened. I did love you. I always did. I never stopped. But I wasn't in control of myself at that time. I still don't even really know how it happened. I hardly even remember it. That time at the asylum's all a blur, and they were feeding me that medication, like, ten pills a day. I didn't even know my own name."

"But every time I thought of leaving, every time I got too frightened of what was happening, I'd think of you and how you wanted me to be well and how strong you were helping me and sending me away that day and all you did for me and all we wanted to do together that we couldn't do if I couldn't get well so I stayed and I took the medicine, and then one night . . . "

She was crying now, big, fat tears rolling down her face that she didn't bother to stop. His hands curled at his sides. He wouldn't go back to her. He wouldn't hold her again. He wouldn't try to wipe away her tears any more or protect her any longer. She'd hurt him. It was no longer his place to protect, shield, care, or, and most especially of all, love her.

"Then one night I was talking to him and we were both scared and we were saying how scared we were and then he kissed me and then the next thing I remember is waking up naked and in the bed with him and knowing, just knowing that I'd messed up everything and my life from there on would be Hell. I didn't go overseas to study. I went for more help. But I'm not here trying to make excuses or anything."

"You're not?" he finally managed to interject, and his harsh demand made her tears increase seemingly a hundred fold.

"No. No, really, I'm not." She shook her head, and her blonde hair flew around her slender face. She'd lost so much weight, he realized, that he'd almost think her anorexic if he didn't know better. "I just want you to understand. Jack and Doug say that your life hasn't been the same, either, and that you're miserable, too, but I don't expect you to forgive me or to understand. But I do want you to know what that drug did to me. And I understand that you can't forgive me. I don't deserve forgiving, even though if there was any way possible, I'd do anything to change that night and to have not gone so that that . . . that horrible deed didn't happen and we were still together and that you . . . you knew I love you!"

Her words broke off into a heartfelt wail, and Pacey moved. He could stand it no longer. His arms were around her waist, pulling her close against the protective shelter of his strong and loving arms, and his lips upon hers before he even really knew he had moved. He had never stopped loving her. She had never stopped loving him. And, Pacey supposed, as he drug Andie even closer to him, she went willingly, their tongues slipped into each other's mouths and began the sweetest, most passionate duel that either of them had ever known, Andie's foot slowly raised, and Jack, Doug, and the rest of their family and friends grinned from just inside the house where Pacey's surprise party did await, that, in the end, no matter what else happened or what else either of them had ever done, that love was all that mattered.

He wanted to shout how much he loved her, but he didn't. He'd always been a man of action, and Pacey yet again let his actions speak for her as he kissed her long, deep, and senseless there in front of their whole world, ravished her sweetly, and strove desperately to make up for all the time they'd missed, all because of a stupid medication and its horrible side affects.

The medication was taken off of the market. Andie, who'd finally gotten real help and who was a chairperson on the committee fighting to protect the world from its side affects, was key in having it removed. Neither Pacey nor Andie ever again let another moment go by without showing each other how much they loved one another, and they were married the following Spring. Jack and Doug both served as their best men, and when at last gay marriage was allowed in their state, Pacey and Andie were their best man and bride's maid when they, too, wed, uniting their families twice forever more.

**The End**


End file.
